Category: Work

Rainy day, sunny heart

It’s entirely crappy outside, but for some reason I feel way better about the world today.  Keith seems almost entirely healed up from his wisdom removal (he isn’t, but the swelling is way down) and he is hardly using any painkillers.  He is steadfastly opposed to the unnececessary use of any drugs, prescription or not.  Katie is cheerful about the world too.  She’s decided not to get too upset about anything.  Of course I could go on at great length about THAT.

One of my regular readers complained recently that I’m not WRITING ENOUGH.

 

Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond.  With some effort, I said, “Well, I was kinda trying to take Thumper’s Mom’s advice, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin at all. But how ‘me’ is that?  Perhaps I should be locking and loading, rocking and rolling, twitching and foaming, as per usual.  But is this wise?  Should I not be aspiring to Buddha like calm and a world view which encompasses monts et merveilles without losing any cool?

Speaking of cool, I’m off to see Cory Doctorow at SFU on Friday.  I got the afternoon off.  I’m going to go and get a beer, and then go to the washroom, and then line up, and then call Rob of Nine (typed Nice, which is hilarious, because Rob of Nine is many things but ‘nice’ is not in the top ten soubriquets which I would apply to him) to come up the hill and join me.

Air Canada is full of devastated employees today.  The North Hangar is going to get entirely cleaned out.

Well, it’s time to suck back coffee and head for the salt mines.  More later.

Yech I really did not need to see that pic

Okay, thanks to the Internet, I now understand the references to the Goatse man.  If you don’t already understand the reference, don’t bother looking it up, and this means YOU, mOm, and if you do get it, you can have a good laugh on me.

ScaryClown emailed me a link to an author about quality.  I burst out laughing when I read the email and replied (enjoying my advanced age for the first time in MONTHS) “Hey, I read that book in 1988.”  Yes, I am referring to the venerable Quality is Free by Philip Crosby, which I read, as I recollect, when I was working at either the law firm or at CDS.  Anyway, it was when God was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth.  It had a very powerful effect on my thinking about how to run a company, and of course I keep finding it in company libraries and in people’s personal collections, and I always laugh when I see it.

It’s like church.  It’s the same message, over and over again.  It’s no surprise that Philip Crosby is a committed Christian, and that his message hums along like a sermon.

Oh, for the purposes of clarity, and to scotch the notion that I’m being sarcastic when I refer to a committed Christian…..  There are committed Christians, and there’s everybody else.  Committed Christians are people who have accepted the yoke of the Lord and make their lives their witness.  They try to love, and they try not to judge.  Everybody else has decided that Christ wears jackboots, and is going to come and kick the shit outta everybody they don’t personally like.  I have yet to meet a Christian who didn’t fall into one of those two categories.  The first kind of Christian I have no issues with.  I’m looking forward to taunting the other kind of Christian in the lake of fire.

As for there being contradictions in the Bible, which really gets my goatse, something bizarre occurred to me recently, and I thought I’d share it.  There are contradictions in my own DNA…. Ain’t nothing whole and perfect, except maybe an idea.

Off for a walk

Briefly:

  • I went out to the Golf Course with the folks last night.  We were gargling a liquid goodbye to Darryl and Dave, who had been with the company 17 and 11 years respectively.  I like and respect them both, but it’s Dave I’ll miss the most, because he is a complete sweetie and I ate lunch with him damned near every work day for five years.
  • I gave a neckrub to the guy who hired him away from my employer however; I too can live in hope.
  • I worked the entire table and gave everybody who wanted a neck rub same; excepting only that greedy oinker RobofNine, who’d already had one that day.
  • At the beginning of the day I gave Burnt a package of Buffy Valentines; he indicated pleasure in a deadpan sort of way.
  • The Dalai Jarmo gave an extremely amusing and highly accurate description of what happens when a slender, intelligent and goodlooking female new hire gets dropped into an engineering department.  Punch line, “Every time I turned around, some guy had pulled out a bigger crimping tool.”
  • Paul and Keith came out!  Keith had a Crantini. Paul tried to pay, but I made sure I gave him my share.  Paul was especially happy because there were not one but TWO flying buddies there, being RobofNine and Jeff F., who now works with Susan N., who was ALSO at the Course, and… well, you get the idea that the high tech community in Vancouver is about a thousand strong, and you have to mind your p’s and q’s.
  • When I got home, Keith, who is a marvel among children, had provided Dun Tot from St Germain bakery in Metrotown.  My happiness may be imagined.  No sign of Katie; her door is closed though, and I don’t know where she is for sure.
  • Two cow-irkers gave me detailed and horrific descriptions of why they are now so miserable that quitting without another job to go to seems like a viable option. They are both solid contributors to the org so I am shaking my head.  I just started working with one of them so I only recently came to an understanding of his value.  The other one I only knew by his reputation from other people, but it was solid.  It was a poke in the eye, lemme tell you.
  • One of my other cherished cow-irkers called me an evil genius.  Happy sigh!
  • Brother Jerome was there, as was the Otto-man. However, Tom and Mike couldn’t make it so we only reunited one half of the original lunch bunch.
  • Dave also described his exit interview.  Man, I can only wish I’d been a fly on the wall.

Well, it’s 6:30 in the morning, and unless I actually put on a coat and go for a much needed walk, it ain’t gonna happen.  May you all have a lovely day!

valentine….

I am completely freaked out about a telephone conversation I had the other day, and all I can do is wait until I talk to the right person and get the story straight.   Phew, okay, that’s dealt with.  I should freak out more slowly or something.  Better now.
In the meantime, I’m the cic at work today and possibly tomorrow, everybody in tech has the crud, and I’m only finished printing out about 1/10th of my company Valentine cards. WHICH I’ll have you know I’m doing at home; I’m not scamming company resources to do it.
After sober consideration I have to give one to the CEO and the CFO, because both have them have spent money on food for me, and you have to acknowledge these things.  And actually the CEO bought me beer one time when I tagged along for a drinking session (hrr…) so he’ll get a really nice one.

20,600 words and counting

Last night was the most fun I’ve had in so long that it’s just bizarre. Somebody I thought had no use for me treated me like a cool older sister all night in a myriad of subtle and unsubtle ways; somebody I know basically by reputation as a good person talked to me with the kind of amusing intelligence that makes my month, let alone my day, and I really liked everything I saw last night. Oh, and I talked to an award winning actress, who was older than me so I DIDN’T have to feel like I was the oldest person there. And that crowd wasn’t ageist ANYWAY; it was just crap I was carrying around with me until I’d been there for about 15 minutes. Continue reading 20,600 words and counting

As predicted

Yesterday at work was completely and utterly without incident. It was so peaceful and happy that it really was quite remarkable.

The bruise on my calf from where the muscle snapped is now a tennis ball sized navy circle. However, I am walking much better. The muscle that snapped is also the one that the sciatic nerve travels through… no coincidence I suspect… so I’m all twingy and twangy and the foot numbness is pretty bad. Still it’s good to be able to walk faster than a constipated snail and I get fifteen metres at a time when I’m not even limping at all.  Especially on level ground.
Keith just brought me coffee, happy child.  Katie, of course, is absent and hasn’t called.  She must be pretty confused right now.  The next 85 words deleted because they aren’t sufficiently constructive and respectful.

I came back into the house when I missed my bus.  Then the phone rang and Paul said he’d give me a lift.  A week ago I would have passed.  But things have changed, as always.
The other night the kids called a family meeting and essentially read us the riot act.

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. 

Or to the like effect.  Essentially, they don’t give a shit if Paul and I are having trouble living together; they want us to keep the peace and stay in the house.  Katie isn’t so attached to the house but she’s much attached to peacefulness (rude, unconstructive comment here deleted…).  So now we’re in non-non-divorce territory; we can’t divorce because we aren’t married and we can’t split up because of our extremely convenient living arrangements as itemized by our children, who see their comfortable berth during the next phase of their schooling evaporating if we split.  However, thanks to the wonders of the Inertnest, it turns out that a non non divorce is completely normal, and how couples did things anyways before divorce was popularized by a particularly scummy brand of shyster, operating in cahoots with the MSM.

So, we still have to hammer out a separation agreement and there are other domestic issues hanging fire, but it was very bizarre having my domestic arrangements critiqued with such relentless and dispassionate efficiency by my children; it could only happen to me and Paul.